Ikegami Electronics/ ARRI: Cameras gain from HDR

Higher dynamic range, with 20 times the contrast of standard video, offers better colour rendition and the image sharpness is “profoundly different. It really is as close to the eye as you can get with today’s technology,” said Milan Krsljanin, Arri’s director of business development.

Ikegami is showing a prototype HDK-97Arri expanded range camera that makes use of the full dynamic range of the sensor. Both it and Arri are working with the prototype Dolby Vision system. The 32-inch 1920x1080 display uses quantum dot technology, and offers 2,000 nits of brightness and 600,000:1 contrast.

The sensor on the HDK-97Arri has a bigger pixel size, “which gives higher dynamic range. The sensor has a dual gain structure, which gives two A/D convertors for each pixel, and the combined signal expands the dynamic range,” said Naoki Kashimura, Ikegami’s director of marketing and product strategy.

The dynamic range improvements are one of the key reasons the EBU is more interested in UHD Phase 2 than Phase 1, insisted Krsljanin, “because of HDR, higher frame rate, wider colour gamut and more appropriate audio, as well as higher resolution.” What is stopping the move to HDR is the wait for standardisation, said Kashimura, but existing users of the camera will get it via a software upgrade.

Ikegami also has a new 4K output board for the HDK-97Arri, for up-sampling to Ultra HD in the CCU, and is showing its third-generation 8K camera, created for NHK, which uses four 1.25-inch sensors and was used at the World Cup. It hopes to use this technology for future 4K and beyond cameras.